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Donald Trump and his Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vowed to find and arrest the “worst” and “violent” criminal offenders among the immigrants they encountered. increase of federal officials in American cities over the past several months.
They High-profile immigration enforcement operations Thousands of people were locked down in major cities across the country. But the vast majority have not been convicted of any crime, and more than half have no criminal record at all.
Less than 30 percent of those arrested in those operations had prior criminal convictions, according to an analysis bythe new York Times Using arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. An even smaller share of those arrested were convicted of a violent crime.
The most common punishments were for drunk driving and other traffic offenses.
The data closely mirrors national trends in immigration arrest data Through Trump’s mass deportation campaign, the share of people with criminal convictions in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody dropped to just 28 percent in October — down from 46 percent at the beginning of the year.
Trump declared a “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C., in August, sending federal agents and National Guard troops into the nation’s capital. Trump falsely claimed the city was “taken over by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.” But according to the government’s own data, more than 80 percent of immigrants arrested in that operation had no prior criminal records.
ICE arrested more than 1,100 people in D.C. from August to mid-October, more than triple the number of ICE arrests in the city within the first seven months of the year.
But that spike saw a sixfold increase in arrests of immigrants with no criminal records Washington Post Analysis Federal data obtained by the Deportation Data Project.
In Chicago, only 15 percent of the immigrants detained in the week-long “Operation Midway Blitz” led by Customs and Border Protection had prior criminal convictions. Only 3 percent had prior convictions for violent crimes.
ICE data through Oct. 15 analyzed by the Deportation Data Project shows that the majority of people arrested in Chicago — 67 percent — had only civil immigration violations, such as overstaying a visa or crossing the border illegally.
According to non-public, arrest data from those operations tracked with ICE arrest data nationally, nearly three-quarters of all immigrants booked into ICE custody since October have no prior criminal convictions. ICE data leaked to liberal think tank Cato Institute.
Nearly half of all ICE detainees held in custody from October to mid-November were not charged with any crime, Cato reports.
Cato found that only 5 percent had received a violent criminal conviction.
Homeland Security has disputed the findings and described Cato’s numbers as “made up” with “no valid data behind them.”
The share of people with prior convictions for violent crimes such as assault, robbery or murder fell to 5 percent in mid-October from 15 percent in 2024, according to data from the Deportation Data Project.
But high-profile campaigns and intensified arrests of immigrants in Democratic-led cities with large immigrant populations have led to an explosion in immigration arrests. skipping your court hearingAnd a recent Supreme Court decision has allowed federal agents to racially profile people suspected of being in the country illegally, paving the way for a street-level cleanup.
recent Reporting from ProPublica More than 170 cases of American citizens being detained by immigration agents have also been reported so far this year. In dozens of those cases, charges were dropped or never filed, the outlet found.
Homeland Security has argued that those officers only arrest citizens if they “obstructed or assaulted law enforcement.”
More than 60,000 people are in ICE custody across the country, a record high, as the Trump administration is on pace to deport more than 600,000 people from the country within the first year of the president’s second term.
Here’s a first look at the results of the first wave of Trump’s immigration campaigns in US cities The administration deployed a “strike team” to Minneapolis. and launch another Border Patrol attack, This time in New Orleans.
Homeland Security on Thursday lauded the arrests of multiple “child sex offenders, domestic abusers and violent gang members” during “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota, as well as the first arrests of “criminal illegal aliens” in the newly launched “Operation Catahoula Crunch” in southeast Louisiana.
“Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens harming them, their families or their neighbors,” Assistant Secretary of State Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
